Reflective Essay

Victoria Oslund
EDUC 203
12/10/12
Reflective Essay. Teaching and Learning in a Diverse Society has truly opened my eyes to what I will be facing in a classroom, whether it be the type of students I will be teaching or how I will teach my students a controversial topic. It gave me many different ways to bring up a hard topic that someone people would feel uncomfortably teaching to younger students. Not only did it open my eyes it has helped me think in abstract ways on topics that are new to me and being able to see the situation in other point of views. This was all possible by taking part in all possible actives inside and outside the classroom. Through completing the assigned readings I learned a lot about myself that I didn’t know. One would think that it just helped them understand the other side of the viewpoint but it did a lot more for me. It opened my eyes to the world around me and what others are faced with day in and day out. I came from a pretty well off family who never really worried about that much. I went to a small high school that wasn’t very diverse in many different ways. About 75% of the school grew up with the same kids and in the same house their whole life. Not many of them got out to see the world. However, I grew up in Palm Beach, Florida. I went to a Baptist Private School that had many privileges that most schools do not receive. So the move to a rural area was a big change. The one thing that I first noticed that when I went from 4th grade in a private school to fifth grade in a public school, I felt like I repeated a grade and didn’t really learn anything new that year. I always thought that it was the layout of the curriculum but through this class I found out that it was not the state it was the difference between private and public education. I didn’t receive the same resources either. I remember out classroom having it own bathroom and a parent always sitting in to help the teacher if need be, but that wasn’t how it was in the public school. I believe these reading opened my eyes to all the things that I have experienced and all the things that I will. It helped me learn to always find something different and interesting about every person and to not judge even though I am being judged every day. The classroom discussions were amazing in helping me connect the readings to every ones viewpoint. It helped me understand that every person takes in information in a different way, which helps make the picture of the text more clear. Everyone in our class seemed to come from a different back ground and live a different life which made it that much more interesting to listen to everything that they had to say. It brought the text to life, which made it easier to remember. It taught me that every student will excel in some way, and as a teacher you must give him or her that chance to do so. You can be limiting on many things and you must be opened minded. The biggest thing it helped me with was that my opinion mattered in everyone else’s success. I use to hate talking in a loud group and speaking my option. I always thought no one cared to way say it, but once I heard other talk and noticed that it helped me learn about the text in a different way I thought that if them talking helped me would me talking help them? So I started to share my view and help open doors for the others in our class. The many different films we watched were something different that I had never seen before. The one I found most interesting was the Stoning of Soraya M. After watching that film the only thing that went through my head was “what did I just watch?” I told myself from the beginning that I would not watching anyone throw a stone at her because I thought that it would hunt me for the rest of my life. And I must say that every day I think about how wrong that was for the people in her town to do such a horrible thing to her. I just have to keep reminding myself that it was only a film but still, it made the whole thing true to some extent. It helped me release that this does happen to people around the world every day and America believes there is nothing we can do about it or they don’t want to become part of something that they don’t need to be a part of. No one should tell you what your religion says but in this case someone should have at least pointed out that lying is also a sin and Soraya did not deserve what she received and no women deserves that. But no one could stand up and say that because it would not be accepted in her society. The Paper clips film made the holocaust real to me. We have all learned about it in the classroom but no one can really picture 6 million. It is a huge number and for the students to come up with colleting paper clips so that they were able to visualize it was something I would never expect from my students. But then again I guess as a teacher you have to help open doors for students instead of closing them by giving them just what you expect on an assignment. You should have an open mind when it comes to projects and papers and know that all kids think in a different way so no one paper will be just like another one. Crash was an amazing movie. It hit every stereotype there is out there and connected them all together. We could all talk about how we have seen these stereotypes come true whether it be that when you see people of color walking around you typically feel a little hint of danger or that you assume an Arib is a Muslim. It also helped show how they felt about the stereotype they were given and how some of them are trying to break this stereotype but it is hard when the younger generation does not appreciate the chances they are given. Writing about it made my mind go in so many different directions with what was going on in the film. All my thoughts seem to be right though because they film was one big loop and it even showed how it will be a never ending cycle of stereotype after stereotype. It helped me understand the importance of an equal opportunity for all your students and helping them excel and break these stereotypes. As a teacher it will help me in trying to show all my students that just because they look different or dress differently or talk differently they are still a human being and feel the same why on the inside as everyone else does and no one likes to be made fun of or hurt because of something that they are not able to change about themselves. Watching the last film Bullied I was truly heart broken to see this truly affect someone in such a way that it did. It showed that not every student is treated equally and that you might be the only teacher that cares about the student and feels like what is happening is wrong. Therefore, you must stand up for them in a place where their voice isn’t being heard. His education was truly being hurt because of this and some times the teacher thought that he was lying about something that no student could possible make up. The best part was when they showed three different people sit in the witness stand and tell the story about how the principle brew off the situation and then the principal saying she never had talked to his family. How can an educator lie about something like that? What if he would have killed himself and you could have stopped that from happening by simply punishing the boys for their wrongdoing? I just don’t get how no one in the education world did anything for this young man whose voice wasn’t being heard. The Supreme Court case was something different for me. We have all learned about the basic court cases but you don’t really learn much about the ones that have to do with the classroom or special needs students and the different things that they face in the classroom. I felt like this was one of the harder assignments that was presented to us because I don’t do well with public speaking and I felt like the class was judging me. But after being in the class and understand everything about every one it didn’t seem that way by the end. I think that doing them at the end would have been a lot easier and I wouldn’t have felt so much pressure. I also understand that it was something that we need to learn at the beginning because it just showed so many different cases where some one was being treated differently because of something they could not change about themselves. It helped me realize that every student will face some sort of challenge in the classroom, and as a teacher, you must be fair and treat every student equally no matter what could set them apart from the class. You must also give every student the chance to learn in the best environment that you can possible provide. It was a great lead in to what we were going to learn about in the class. Writing the questions about the reading and films presented a challenge in them selves. After reading the chapters I always felt like I had a pretty good understand about what was being said but I wanted to know how you would handle some of the situations that were presented. As a teacher I know I will face something new every day. Many people think it is an easy career because what you teach never changes but that isn’t 100% true. The ideas you teach in the classroom will change very little from year to year but the types of students you teach will change day to day. Yes, I say day to day because so many things affect how a child will learn on any given day. It could be their birth day, their boy friend just broke up with them, their dog died, their grand mother is in the hospital, it could be Friday, the list goes on and on. The questions made me reflex on this idea most the time. It made me question how we will tackle the obstacles that stand in front of us everyday and how will be over come them so that our students get what they need to out of the lesson. Through out this class I have gone back and worth about how I will teach in my class. I have thought, “I will be the mean and hard teacher, the teacher that student respect and learn from” to “I will be the understanding teacher, the teacher the students come to with their problems.” But I think the real teacher I want to be is in the middle of the two. I want to be respected and approachable for my students. I want them to learn and to follow my lead. I don’t want to set any bar to low but I want them to achieve all that they can. I will encourage as well as explain and be firm when nothing else works. I will be the best I can be and give my students everything that they need to be successful inside the classroom as well as outside in the real world. I will make sure they understand everything around and help them become a better person.